


Explanations

by OceanTheSoulRebel



Series: Escaping the Cage [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Minor Character Death, anti-Circle, anti-chantry, my mage hates the circle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 04:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14866508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanTheSoulRebel/pseuds/OceanTheSoulRebel
Summary: In which Alistair asks a difficult question and gets a fight he wasn't really prepared for.Or, in which my mage really fucking hates on the Circle and the Chantry.





	Explanations

**Author's Note:**

> Ilya, pronounced ee-le-yah.

His eyes. His damn eyes. They had a flash about them, when he was emotional - when the Templars tried to tear him away, when he begged for his freedom in Redcliffe, or even when they had stowed themselves away in the library to whisper about hopes and fears and dreams, they shone with some inner light.

They were haunting her. Or maybe, perhaps, he was haunting her.

“Are you all right, dear?”

She stirred in her bedroll, sitting up to peek out from under her blankets. Wynne’s concerned face peered back at her, lit by a small flickering ball of magelight.

“You sounded like you were having a fright, are you well?” 

Ilya groaned and rubbed at her eyes, pressing the lingering image of Jowan’s face back to the Fade. “Just another bad dream, Senior Enchanter. I’ll get used to them.”

Wynne pursed her lips in the way Ilya was coming to know, in a way that heralded some advice or a well-meaning lecture, but she only nodded. “I’m here if you need me, my dear,” she reminded her, and turned back to her own blankets after another sweep of Ilya’s face.

Ilya burrowed back into her blankets, the fur thick and dense around her face. Around her their companions dozed or worked quietly in the night. She could hear Zevran humming to himself as he sharpened his dagger at the fire a few feet away, the rhythmic scrape of his whetstone lulling her into a disquiet stillness.

Would her leadership lead to his death, too? To the others?

 _Please,_ Jowan had begged her, back in the Circle. _Freedom,_ he said. _We can be free, just like we said we would be._

 _Don’t talk like that,_ she had warned him. Anders - the third in their little trio, another bound to get himself into more trouble than he could bear - had already been punished, this time whisked away from the others, somewhere no one had seen them. _I don’t want to lose you, too._

 _Lily and I will go find yours. We’ll track them all down, so we can finally be free, and then we’ll go start a farm somewhere quiet. Maybe Orlais._  

He knew exactly what to say, and he had known it. It was too late for her. They’d already sent her phylactery off from the Circle, far from where he could find them on his own, but maybe she could help him - could save one person from the horrors of the Circle, if not herself. He had been a brother to her, the first friend she had made when she first arrived at Kinloch, and he had come to her in his Void-damned hour of need. She had to take the opportunity to save one of them, because both were never meant to survive the Circle.

“And look where that got us,” she muttered into the blankets. The lay-sister Lily had been sent to Aenor, the massive mage prison; Ilya had been conscripted into the Wardens to avoid being made Tranquil for her assistance of a blood mage, and Jowan…

Jowan had been left to rot in his own gore in the dungeon of Redcliffe castle.

\--

“Help me, please,” he asked her quietly, his hands gripping white-knuckle tight around the iron bars of his cell. Jowan’s eyes flitted from the silent faces of her companions before focusing back on her own. “I’m sorry, Ilya, I… I want to make this better.”

Alistair protested when she opened the door. “He just tried to kill the Arl, Surana!” he snapped, his hand reaching for his sword. “He’s a confessed blood mage, what if he - what if he tries to hurt you? Make you his thrall?” He paused, horror dawning over his face as his gaze jumped between her and Jowan. “You’re not going to let him go, are you?”

Ilya looked over her shoulder at him, biting her lip. It was a risk she was willing to take - one she had taken before, not that she knew so at the time - but her hand stilled all the same as it lingered on the massive locking mechanism. “Trust me,” she said, and she walked into the small cell.

“Ilya,” Jowan whimpered, pulling her into a tight embrace. It was so much like the old times; if she could ignore the rot and mold of the dungeon, maybe they could still be back there, hating their existence but together in their misery.

She stepped away to sit on the low cot, the damp cell walls leaching the heat from her body through her robes, and she patted the space beside her with a bittersweet familiarity. Jowan hesitated, no doubt the remembrance of many such instances coming to his mind, as well, but he joined her, letting her enfold him into her arms as she had done time and time again at the Circle. Once more they were just children - scared and alone in a world that swept them along in its hatred.

“Do you remember what we said in the Circle, Jowan?” she asked, settling with his back against her chest, his head nestled into her shoulder. Ilya adjusted her position and ignored the discomforted shuffling of her companions outside the cell.

“Anything,” he answered. “We would do anything to get out, the three of us.” Jowan relaxed into her embrace, and she could see the tears that spilled over his cheeks.

He had grown thin in his life outside the tower, Ilya realized distantly, his ribs clearly felt under the threadbare fabric of his robes. “And we will do everything to be free, to be people. That was it, right? What we said back then, you, me, and Anders?”  

 _“Yes,”_ he breathed. Jowan’s eyes shone with tears as he twisted to look at her, their limbs splayed awkwardly over the small bed. His hand rose to lace his fingers with her own, and if he saw the dagger in her left hand from the corner of his eye, he didn’t care. “Don’t let them take me away, Ilya, don’t let the Templars take me back there. I won’t survive if they do.”

Ilya closed her eyes and tightened her grip on the hilt of her short blade. As a blood mage, the Templars would have him killed, or made Tranquil to continue to work for the Circle. As the attempted assassin who tried to kill one of the more powerful men in Ferelden, Bann Teagan or the Guerrin family would have him put to death. And as a failed loose end of his growing coup, Regent Loghain would need to kill him before word got out that he was behind the attempt.

There was no way Jowan could walk out of the dungeon alive; at the very least, he wouldn’t be alive for long if he did.

“I won’t.” Her blade was sharp and quick as she helped a feared blood mage one more time, burrowing the tip into his chest.

Jowan did not fight, and she hated him all the more for it. It was a mess - she had held the dagger in her off-hand, the positioning less than ideal, and she more likely punctured his lung rather than caught his heart, but he didn’t fight her.

“I’m sorry, Jowan,” she murmured into his hair, tightening her grip on his slackening fingers. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

The light faded from his eyes as she held him, blood foaming on his lips as he stuttered for breath that never came.

\--

It was just before dawn when she emerged from her tent to find Alistair’s hollow eyes watching her from across the firepit. He nodded to her as she approached, blanket wrapped tightly about her shoulders, and joined him near the small fire.

“Why’d you do it?” he asked quietly, the words slow and uncertain. “Back in Redcliffe, I mean.”

Ilya sniffled, still struggling with the dream. Alistair hadn’t spoken to her in days, since they had left the castle. “You mean Connor.”

“I… yes. And your friend.”

She sighed. “I don’t expect you’ll understand,” she said simply. “You wouldn’t get it.”

“I’m _trying_ to get it, Surana. I just…” he trailed off, his voice small. “I don’t know why it had to happen like that, is all. I want to know why, to understand you. I… I couldn’t have - wouldn’t have - made that choice. For either of them.”

Ilya’s gaze dropped to the ground as she saw Jowan’s eyes flash through her mind again, as she heard the demonic laughter of Connor’s demon ring through the forest clearing. “You don’t know what it’s like,” she started, “living in the Circle.”

She felt him stir beside her, but he didn’t say anything.

“It’s… it’s the worst thing I can imagine for a person. Really. Wynne seems to have grown to be okay with Circle life but I never did. Jowan and I… we would sit and dream of life outside the tower. Good, bad, anything was better than being imprisoned like that.”

“...And that was why you… that’s why you killed them?”

“Death is better than being sent to the Circle.” Ilya turned to watch his face contort with the idea, his lip curling into a weak protest. “Isolde was ready to die to save Connor, but he was only going to be ripped away from her and Eamon anyway. I can’t say whether he would have survived the Circle, but the Templars would have watched him all the more for all this.”

“It wasn’t your call to make,” he ground out. “It might have been better than -”

“It was _only_ my call!” Ilya exclaimed, her voice loud in the quiet morning air. She shook her head and stood. “You wanna have this out? Then let’s have this out, but not in the middle of camp. People are still sleeping.”

She stomped toward the tree line, clutching her blanket close and trying not to shiver as Alistair moved behind her. The light scrape of metal on chainmaille always sent a cold shudder down her spine, too close to the Templar captors of the Circle. Ilya leaned into the firm trunk of a tree as he shuffled on his feet, studying his face.

“You are the more senior Warden, Alistair, but you defer to me and make me take charge. Which means you let me, or maybe make me, make all the decisions. And I have to be okay with that, because you’re really not that much senior to me. So, okay, I live with it.”

Alistair nodded, his brow furrowing slightly. “Okay…”

“But you, in all your templar-ness, would have saved Connor, would have done everything you could to do so, and would have ruined a family when the Order came to take him. And I couldn’t do that to them.”

He shook his head incredulously. “So the only option in your mind was to kill him? Surely there was something else we could have done!”

“Connor was essentially dead, Alistair, but at least I gave them a body to mourn, a reason why they will no longer know and love their son. If he had been taken to the Circle, he could die and they would never know. And he might have - he had already made a deal with a demon, and neither the Knight Commander nor the First Enchanter would take kindly to that, especially after the uprising at the Circle.”

She huffed, her nails biting into the thick skin of the fur blanket. “Even if that wouldn’t have happened, even if he weren’t killed or immediately made Tranquil, he would have nothing of his life outside the Circle. We’re told that not even the King could have made contact with a mage at the tower. No letters, no visits, nothing. Nothing of his life from before. He would have been lost to the Guerrins anyway.”

“And is that so bad? To be sent somewhere to learn and be protected?”

She bristled and stepped away from the tree trunk. Alistair, to his credit, only flinched when she whipped her hand from her chest and pointed a finger in his face.

“To be sent somewhere where you learn you are nothing, you mean - less than nothing. A weapon. We learn to control our power, yes - ice, or fire, or lightning, or healing, or a whole slew of useful things, helpful things - but the Chantry turns us into weapons. We’re only pulled from our tower in times of war, Alistair, and only because otherwise warriors like you might fall.”

“That - that doesn’t sound entirely fair,” he sputtered, raising his hands. “Aren’t Circles supposed to be helpful to you mages? To… to harness the power you have, make sure that it doesn’t, ah, rule over you, like in the Chant? Surely that’s worth something.”

“You don’t even know!” Ilya barked out a laugh, harsh and bitter. “I was stolen from my parents at eleven years old, Alistair. I wasn’t Andrastian then, and I’m not now, and that was one of the biggest thorns in my side the whole time. The Sisters and the templars who oversaw the apprentices continually complained to Irving about my being a heathen, about my disbelief in Andraste and the Maker and the whole Void-damned Chantry. If there was no Chantry, there’d be no reason for the Circle and the Templar Order to be how they are, right? And I told them so, repeatedly. They had no sway over me, but I didn’t want to die. I was smarter than that.”

She grit her teeth. Ilya could feel the tears forming in her eyes, but she’d be damned if the fucking former-templar prince of Ferelden saw her cry. “They didn’t make me a better mage, Alistair, they just remade me into a tool easier to use. They do it to all of us. We aren’t people in the eyes of your Chantry, and it doesn’t even matter if we don’t believe in the Maker or the Chant or the Chantry. They hate us the same and they kill us, little by little, in those damned towers.”

Alistair’s steel-clad fists clenched, fingers pumping anxiously as he thought. “But there was a chance to save Connor,” he grit out. “The Circle mages could have -”

“And that was time we didn’t have. Would you have had us save Redcliffe Village just to lose it while traveling to the Circle, to beg them for mages and resources they can’t spare? Or do you not remember the blood mages and demons that overtook that damned place, Alistair?”

“He was a _child,_ Surana!”

“And he was my decision, _Theirin_ ,” she hissed. “I will never willingly let mages go to the Circle. I will never let the Templar Order and the damned Chantry have any more control of us than they already have stolen!”

Alistair ran a hand through his hair, his growing distress plain on his face. “But you didn’t let the templars kill the mages in the tower,” he countered. “If that’s how you feel, why didn’t you?"

She stilled, her eyes narrowing on his face. “Did you _see_ Cullen’s face when he gave that order?” Ilya shrugged off the fur blanket, her anger radiating off her in hot waves. “I will not be made a pawn of any templar or Chantry apologist. Not you, not him, not the Knight-Commander, not even the fucking king if Ferelden can get this war figured out.”

“Then why?” he insisted. “I’m trying to understand but you’re talking in circles around me. I don’t know what you mean!”

“Because I can hate the Circle and the templars and the damned Chant of Light all I want, Prince Alistair, but I will not hate my fellow mages for a curse your god gave us,” she spat. “I will not play into the hands of the Chantry by declaring Kinloch Hold unfit for recovery. Connor and Jowan would not have survived that tower, but the mages there had a chance. I couldn’t let Greagoir annul the entire circle and take it from them. The Chantry would see us all as universal threats if I did.”

Her hands fisted, nails digging into the meat of her palms. “Either you trust me to make the call, Alistair, or you don’t. And if you don’t, well, I guess I’ll just fuck off into the woods or something. You can’t work with someone you can’t trust, but templars will never trust mages.”

The silence was telling as the sun broke over the horizon, blushing the sky with its delicate light. She stared past him into the forest as she waited for his response, unable to watch his face. Ilya gathered the discarded fur in her arms and walked past him toward the clearing.

“I’m not a templar,” Alistair finally said. “Surana, I - I don’t understand why you feel this way, and maybe I’ll come to learn why in time, but… I’m not a templar. And, I think of you as more than just a mage, you know.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, and… and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you with this. I just, I just don’t know anymore, and I hoped that maybe you would. But maybe we’re both lost? Or something like that. I just…”

Ilya bowed her head at his confession. “Maybe,” she agreed quietly. She shook her head, strands of hair escaping from its tight braid.

Alistair stood behind her, an ex-templar and a warrior and a man bigger than her, who would always be bigger than her, and she wanted to cry because that’s how it would always be. She, an elven mage, would never know the strength he had, and would always have to fight for what little she had cobbled together - but _maybe he’ll come to learn why in time,_ and as good as he wanted that to be, it would never be good enough _._ She bit her lip at the tears that threatened to stream down her face. Ilya never did have great control over her emotions, a trait that made her and Jowan both fear the brand of Tranquility even more.

“Why Jowan, Surana?”

His words were soft behind her and she turned; in her distress she hadn’t heard him come closer, now less than an arm’s reach away. Ilya couldn’t stop the tears that ran at his earnest, hurt expression, or the instinctive steps backward she took at his closeness.

“Because it was kind, Alistair. I’d ask him to do the same for me, in his shoes,” she finally said, watching as her words registered on his face. Alistair broke their gaze and she turned back toward the camp to leave him among the trees.

**Author's Note:**

> I cried over Jowan, okay? So did Ilya. I had some feelings about all this. I didn't have a beta and it probably shows.
> 
> Come find me on tumblr at [ocean-in-my-rebel-soul!](https://ocean-in-my-rebel-soul.tumblr.com)  
> 
> 
> Comments and concrit always appreciated! Thank you for reading!


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